Push Drop Stick

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About us

Force-free training that works,
for more dogs, sooner.

Push Drop Stick is a dog training app made by a certified dog trainer and a software developer. Its plans teach your dog what to do, in small steps, with rewards, and the app adapts every step to your dog's own results.

Why it exists

To put force-free training that actually works in front of more people, sooner. An owner who is struggling rarely finds a force-free trainer first. They find a shock collar, a prong, or a confident video telling them to dominate their dog. Fear learned that way is far harder to undo than it was to cause.

Refusing to hurt a dog is the easy half. The hard half is competence: an owner whose kind method is not working will not stay kind for long. So every plan is specific enough to hold up in a real kitchen with a real dog, and the app keeps each step at the edge of what your dog can do, never too hard, never too easy.

Fewer dogs shocked, choked and frightened. That is the whole of it.

Who we are

Co-founder · Dog trainer

Allison Wells, CTC

Allison is a professional dog trainer who earned her Certificate in Training and Counselling (CTC), with honours, from the Academy for Dog Trainers. She started I Love Your Dog in downtown Toronto in 2012, walking and boarding dogs, and from 2015 taught reward-based training and behaviour counselling in Haliburton, Ontario: private lessons, group classes, puppies, fear, aggression and leash reactivity.

She wrote Push Drop Stick's core training plans and the Handbook, and filmed the demo videos with Nettle, her Icelandic Sheepdog. The positions the app holds on methods and equipment are hers, and she is accountable for them.

Training and certification

  • 2020Living and Learning with Animals: The fundamental principles and procedures of teaching and learning, with Dr. Susan Friedman
  • 2017Recallers: Building reliable recalls through training games, with Susan Garrett
  • 2016The Academy for Dog Trainers: Certificate in Training and Counselling (CTC), with honours, from the two-year program founded by Jean Donaldson
  • 2014Canine Confidence: Your End of the Lead: Leash reactivity
  • 2014Animal Behaviour and Welfare: The University of Edinburgh
  • 2014Karen Pryor Dog Trainer Foundations: Clicker training
  • 2013Pet First Aid: Walks and Wags

Co-founder · Developer and CEO

Tyler Butchart

Tyler builds the software: the adaptive engine that turns honest reps into the next step, the Journey, the Apple Watch app, Coach and this website.

How we train

Positive reinforcement, built on the behavioural science taught to professional trainers: small steps, clear criteria, and rewards for what you want, with your dog's own results deciding when to move on. The criteria behind push, drop and stick are Jean Donaldson's, taught at the Academy for Dog Trainers; the app does the bookkeeping so you can watch your dog.

  • Push. Four or five out of five: on to the next, harder step.
  • Stick. About three out of five: the same step again.
  • Drop. Too hard right now: back to a step your dog can win.
  • Split. A smaller step in between, when a jump is too big.

The app will never ask you to hurt or frighten your dog: no prong, choke, slip or shock collars, no leash corrections, no dominance. When something isn't working, the answer is a smaller step, a better reward, an easier place, or a professional in front of you. What the app will never do

What we make

  • The app, for iPhone, Apple Watch and the web, with Android on the way. Every plan, the Journey, goals, games and history are free.
  • The plan library: 50+ step-by-step plans across manners, positions, tricks, confidence, grooming and handling.
  • Coach, the AI trainer that remembers your dog, reviews your sessions and writes plans with you, and the Assistant, its free helper. Pricing
  • The Handbook: how dogs learn, reading fear and stress, and the techniques behind every plan.
  • An open door for AI agents: a free, read-only MCP server at https://pushdropstick.com/mcp/public and a guide at /llms.txt.

Shelters, rescues and trainers

The people who place and train dogs can use Push Drop Stick too. Share a dog with an adopter, a foster or a client and they see the same plan, the same history and the same next step, so the training carries on after the dog goes home. Trainers can write their own plans and share them under their own name.

Run a shelter, a rescue or a training business and want to talk about it? Write to Allison at [email protected].

The company

Push Drop Stick is made by Multipurpose Fun, Inc., a Delaware corporation doing business as Push Drop Stick. Our servers are in Virginia and Oregon, USA.